intermittent thoughts on my life and work as the chess coach at IS 318, a public middle school in Brooklyn

Friday, April 13, 2018

spineless

So the USCF put out this statement, which I consider an laughable shirking of their responsibilities. "The US Chess Federation has not received a written complaint to initiate our procedures for factual inquiry and ruling on any allegation of cheating pertaining to this event."And you don't care enough to do anything on your own?? After you have been begged in a timely fashion to by no less than 12 coaches? After your own national championship becomes an outrage and a joke?It's the casual denial of responsibility that kills me.You have all the facts you need, Carol Meyer, USCF et al. Cheating obviously occurred and ruined YOUR national championship. People complained to your organization in time to remove the kids from the section and fix the problem. If your rules are really set up to make you powerless to investigate on your own, then I feel sorry for you. Pretty soon no one is going to pay money to attend your national championship if you don't fulfill your fundamental responsibility of enforcing the rules.

Just fill out an ethics complaint and provide your evidence/proof. Stop all the drama. If you have evidence and proof, the ethics committee will see that. If you don't, then nothing happens. Costs $50.

I think one of the things that is frustrating is that this feels more like a whistleblower case than one person being victimized by cheating. The 'fake' tournament which is so blatantly and obviously fake (where a mathematician said that the tournament is so absurd it's not even worth quantifying) that it's incredible that it doesn't even raise eyebrows at USCF. They sit and wait for someone to file paperwork.

If you see Walmart dumping trash in the river, you can call a regulator. They are going to investigate whether there is paperwork or not. I'm sure they would respond to it even if it was mentioned in a social media post.

In this case, the evidence is sitting on the USCF's own servers, and someone processed, approved and rated that tournament.

The fact that after all this is pointed out to them, and that it does not bother them and they still insist on official paperwork is very disturbing.

This is aside from whatever can be done about the nationals. Even if results can't be altered after the fact (I think in sports, medals have been revoked after winners fail drug tests), the fake tournament is still a big problem.

I think that's where the frustration comes from, other than the USCF mishandling the situation last week. After all this discussion, mathematical proof, that they refuse to investigate is really telling about what an organization the USCF is.

WOW! Just after stumbling upon this scandal I found a separate batch of forged results (http://www.uschess.org/msa/AffDtlTnmtHst.php?H6043128). Ms. Vicary, go thru some of those tournaments and tell me what the statistical probability of that is ;)))

There are many fake events that have been submitted and rated by US Chess. Some consist entirely of fictional people that were created by a single individual. Some of these culprits were US Chess former board members. As long as there is little verification, US Chess will just accept the money whether it is fake members or fake events -- and someone benefits by rating fixing. Not surprising that coaches and scholastics have latched onto this.

I just sent an email with my disappointment at the statement. The ED emailed me back quickly and said no one had filed an appeal yet. I don’t know if you have to have some kind of standing to file a complaint. I am disappointed that they put the pressure on the “victim” to complain formally when the problem is well publicized.

It is stunning... it's unfortunate that the uscf is looking so bad now as they are not even the real villains.

But their actions (or inaction) is highlighting a very serious problem with the organization. Maybe they made a mistake last week, but as is often the case, the reaction to it is making things worse. All they needed to say is that the acknowledge some irregularities and that they will look into it as they also await formal ethics complaints.